playing doctor
so why haven't i been posting on here lately? i've been at the hospital taking call, admitting and discharging “my” patients…basically, i am officially playing doctor. there are a ton of hours (about 80 per week, sometimes more), but so far, it’s been great.
i am on my internal medicine rotation, which is 6 weeks long. the first 4 weeks are on inpatient hospital service (primary care internal medicine team). we have a huge medical team, which consists of 9 people: one consultant (attending physician), 2 senior residents (people who have their m.d.s but are in their third year of residency/post-med-school training), 3 interns (m.d.s who are in their first year of residency), and 3 of us (third year med students).
my schedule works on a 4-day rotation. first day i’m on call. i start at sometime between 6 and 7am and we “round,” which means that we go around to all the patients that our team is responsible for and check in on them, check their labs, order tests and update our plan to make them better. this takes several hours. the rest of that day I spend some time reading up on patients, trying to discharge patients, checking in on those who need it, and that afternoon and overnight our team admits new patients. i take a history and do a physical exam on “my” patient(s) and create a plan for their care (under the guidance of a real doctor, of course). depending on how busy we are (i.e. how many patients we get), we may stay up all night long, or we may get a few hours of sleep in a call room. no matter what, though, we stay in the hospital overnight. the second day is my post-call day. if i got to sleep in a call room that night, i get up to pre-round on my patient(s) starting at 6 or 6:30, go to a meeting, then do rounds again. that’s followed by a lunch meeting and we get to go home around 1. on the third and fourth days we arrive early to pre-round, attend a meeting, do rounds with the team, lunch meeting, reading/learning and patient care (checking in, ordering tests, discharging, etc). then the whole thing starts all over the next day and continues for a total of 4 weeks. the following 2 weeks will be on outpatient primary care internal medicine. that will have a schedule that is closer to typical "business hours".
so far i am feeling really lucky. we have a wonderful team. they’re super nice and encourage us to avoid “scut work” (the crappy work med students and interns are often forced to do) and to take advantage of the learning opportunities we have during this rotation. it’s wonderful! and believe it or not, my first couple nights of call weren’t so bad. seeing as how i'm heading into week 4 of inpatient service with q4 (every fourth day call, i am getting rather tired. however, i am on the same schedule as my friend, hilary, so call feels like some sort of warped slumber party. it's a fun twist to working all night longm especially the other night when hilary didn't get a call room. we dragged a recliner into my call room and so we could actually have a real little slumber party for a few hours! it’s also really fun to have my friends, sujit and brandon, on our team. they're both so encouraging and great to work with! sujit was on our team the first 2 weeks and now it's brandon. i am really enjoying this! other than a little bit of exhaustion, it's way better than class from 8-5. i’m hoping it’s giving me the pick-me-up that i have been in desperate need of - despite my lack of sleep!
